Google Ads API Client Library for Perl

This project hosts the Perl client library for the Google Ads API.

Features

• Distributed via CPAN.
• Easy management of credentials.
• Easy creation of Google Ads API service clients.

Requirements

• Perl 5.24.1+

Getting started

1. Clone this project in the directory of your choice via:

   git clone https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-perl.git
   

2. Change into the google-ads-perl directory.

   cd google-ads-perl
   

   You'll see some files and subdirectories:

   • Build.PL: the Perl build file, which holds the dependencies and test types of this project.
   • lib: source code of the library.
   • t: test cases of the library code.
   • examples: many examples that demonstrate how to use the library to execute common use cases via the Google Ads API.
   • googleads.properties: the sample configuration file for the library.
   • log4perl.conf: the sample logging configuration file.

3. Now run the following command at the command prompt. This will install all dependencies needed for using the library and running examples.

   cpan install Module::Build
   perl Build.PL
   perl Build installdeps
   

4. Set up your OAuth2 credentials.

   The Google Ads API uses OAuth2 as the authentication mechanism. Choose the appropriate option below based on your use case, and read and follow the instructions that the example prints to the console.

   If you already have credentials for the AdWords API...

   • If you have the adwords.properties file you used for the AdWords API, copy and name it as googleads.properties. Simply change the key names in the new configuration file as below:

     oAuth2ClientId       --> clientId
     oAuth2ClientSecret   --> clientSecret
     oAuth2RefreshToken   --> refreshToken
     developerToken       --> developerToken
     

     If you are authenticating as a manager account, additionally you must specify:

     loginCustomerId --> Manager account ID (with hyphens removed).
     

   If you're accessing the Google Ads API using your own credentials...

   • Copy the sample googleads.properties to your home directory.

   • Follow the instructions at https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/oauth/cloud-project to create an OAuth2 client ID and secret for the Desktop app OAuth2 flow.

   • Run the generate_user_credentials example, by providing your OAuth2 client ID and secret as the parameters.

   • Copy the output from the last step of the example into the googleads.properties file in your home directory. Don't forget to fill in your developer token too.

   If you're accessing the Google Ads API on behalf of clients...

   • Copy the sample googleads.properties to your home directory.

   • Follow the instructions at https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/oauth/cloud-project to create an OAuth2 client ID and secret for the Web application OAuth2 flow.

   • Run the generate_user_credentials example, by providing your OAuth2 client ID and secret as the parameters.

   • Copy the output from the last step of the example into the googleads.properties file in your home directory. Don't forget to fill in your developer token too.

5. Run the get_campaigns example to test if your credentials are valid. You also need to pass your Google Ads account's customer ID as a command-line parameter:

   perl examples/basic_operations/get_campaigns.pl -customer_id <YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID>
   

   NOTE: Code examples are meant to be run from command prompt, not via the web browsers.

6. Explore other examples.

   The examples directory contains several useful examples. Most of the examples require parameters. You can either pass the parameters as arguments (recommended) or edit the INSERT_XXXXX_HERE values in the source code. To see a usage statement for an example, pass -help as a command-line argument.

   Note: From the source code, you can ignore comments with [START...] and [END...] in them-they are specifically used by Google.

Basic usage

To issue requests via the Google Ads API, you first need to create an API client. For convenience, you can store the required settings in a properties file (googleads.properties) with the following format:

### Google Ads ###
developerToken=INSERT_DEVELOPER_TOKEN_HERE

### OAuth2 ###
clientId=INSERT_OAUTH2_CLIENT_ID_HERE
clientSecret=INSERT_OAUTH2_CLIENT_SECRET_HERE
refreshToken=INSERT_REFRESH_TOKEN_HERE

If you're authenticating as a manager account, additionally you must specify the manager account ID (with hyphens removed) as the login customer ID:

### Google Ads ###
loginCustomerId=INSERT_LOGIN_CUSTOMER_ID_HERE

If you have an googleads.properties configuration file in the above format in your home directory, you can instantiate the client with no arguments:

my $api_client = Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Client->new();

If your configuration file is not in your home directory, you can pass the file location to the the properties_file property as follows:

my $properties_file = "/path/to/googleads.properties";

my $api_client = Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Client->new({
  properties_file => $properties_file
});

You can also get a OAuth2ApplicationsHandler object from the API client, and change the client ID, client secret and refresh token at runtime:

my $api_client = Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Client->new({
  developer_token   => "INSERT_DEVELOPER_TOKEN_HERE",
  login_customer_id => "INSERT_LOGIN_CUSTOMER_ID_HERE"
});

my $oauth2_applications_handler = $api_client->get_oauth2_applications_handler();
$oauth2_applications_handler->set_client_id("INSERT_CLIENT_ID");
$oauth2_applications_handler->set_client_secret("INSERT_CLIENT_SECRET");
$oauth2_applications_handler->set_refresh_token("INSERT_REFRESH_TOKEN");

Get a service client

Once you have an instance of API client, you can obtain a service client for a particular service using one of the ...Service() methods:

my $campaign_serevice = $api_client->CampaignService();

Request/Response Logging

Logging is configured with Log::Log4perl, a generic logging library for Perl.

Logging layout and functionality

Requests are logged with a one line summary and the full request/response body and headers. The level at which messages are logged depends on whether the event succeeded.

Log type	Log name	Success level	Failure level
SUMMARY	Google.Ads.GoogleAds.Summary	INFO	WARN
DETAIL	Google.Ads.GoogleAds.Detail	DEBUG	INFO

Caveat: Mutate requests where Partial failure is true do not cause the entire request to fail. Therefore, partial failure logs are always logged at Success level, not at Failure level as may be expected.

Configuring logging

The client library uses a custom class for all logging purposes and is exposed through the GoogleAdsLogger module. This class provides a default configuration that both summary and detail loggers will log to relative files in the logs folder under your home directory. But the default configuration can be overridden by providing a log4perl.conf file in your home directory.

Logging can be enabled/disabled using the following methods:

• Enables logging for both loggers.

  Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Logging::GoogleAdsLogger::enable_all_logging();

• Disables the summary logging.

  Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Logging::GoogleAdsLogger::disable_summary_logging();

• Disables the detail logging.

  Google::Ads::GoogleAds::Logging::GoogleAdsLogger::disable_detail_logging();

You can use the methods of the GoogleAdsLogger class directly for even more control over how requests are logged.

Running in a Docker container

See the Running in a Docker Container guide.

Proxy configuration

See the Proxy guide.

Miscellaneous

Wiki

• https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-perl/wiki

Issue tracker

• https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-perl/issues

API Documentation:

• https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs

Support forum

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/adwords-api

Authors

• Wang Fan
• Laura Chevalier